


Lay Down Your Head

by waldorph



Series: 2012-2013 Winter Anthology [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Blanket Permission, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finals are a bitch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Down Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> Glee - for **snarky_kat **, who wanted Brody/Rachel naptime****

One thing she liked--one thing she misses about Finn was how solid he was. She's knows it's ridiculous, but they fit in that perfect way, everything about their romance was straight out of a musical. He was tall and broad and when she stood next to him she was tiny and safe. She liked that he would slide an arm around her in bed, or let her drowse against him on the couch while they were watching movies. 

She and Kurt have that, to a certain extent--that shared physical comfort. Sometimes it feels like they're the only two people in the city, and they've gotten good at hugs and pressing against each other when it gets really cold in the apartment. They're comfortable around each other, but it's not the same. Kurt makes her feel better, and he's her best friend, and she doesn't want to cry on anyone else's shoulder when she's homesick, but. Well. They tried sharing a bed once, and then...well, he's a guy, and he was happy to see the morning, and they hadn't been able to make eye contact for a couple of days. 

She hadn't really thought about that in a while. She was busy being angry about not hearing from him, and then being furious and hurt about him backpacking through Georgia and not coming to see her, and then she was heartbroken and sick realizing that she had maybe built them up in her head, and he hadn't grown up with her. She was planning a career, and he was still a lost little boy from Lima, Ohio. She wasn't lying when she said she wanted him to be the last man she loved, but she thinks that the longer she's in New York and the longer he's in Ohio, the less likely that is. 

But it's finals. It's her first round of finals, and she wants to be perfect. So she makes up schedules, and spends a Sunday cooking and filling up their tupperware with high-protein, vegan snacks (they're trying it. And she's thinking about maybe going Kosher, and she's not sure how that would fit in with veganism. Kurt's pretty sure that as soon as finals are over they'll go back to eating the way they used to). She drinks a lot of water and her phone beeps at her to remind her to snack, drink, eat a meal, practice, study, sleep. 

Except the sleep gets harder and harder, because she's in this strange state of hyper-awareness and exhaustion, and she can't find a minute to just power down. She's taking every free second to steal a practice room to work on her performances, her aria. She lives in the library, and she can't sleep. 

They're halfway through finals and eight freshmen have had breakdowns, four of them have withdrawn, and two of them have broken something. Three of the breakdowns ended up hospitalized, and Rachel and her classmates watched and wondered if they would be next. 

"Okay," Brody says, finding her sitting in a hall, reviewing her notes from a study session. "No."

He pulls her up and drags her behind him until she pulls up, rouses enough to dig in her heels. 

"I have to study," she tells him.

"You need to sleep," he argues. "Come on."

He pulls her across campus and she looks around his dorm, bemused. She's pretty sure she's not tired enough to black out, but she doesn't remember...getting here. 

"What we're going to do," he says, "is sit on my bed and watch a movie."

She watches as he strips out of his jeans and shrugs off his overshirt. "That's such a bad line." 

He laughs at her and sits down on the bed, back against the wall. She folds her arms over her chest and raises her eyebrows. 

"Brody."

"You need to chill. This is very chill. The Great Mouse Detective is on Netflix, and we're watching it. Come on." 

She sighs and takes off her shoes and jacket, climbing onto the bed carefully. But her belt digs into her, so she pulls it off and throws it onto the floor, and ignores the way he grins at the movie's opening credits. 

Somewhere between Basil shooting at pillows and the adventure in the toyshop she dozes off, and when she opens her eyes she's covered with a blanket, tucked against Brody with an arm wrapped around her. 

Milla Jovovich keeps saying "multipass" on screen while Bruce Willis smirks. Rachel clears her throat and shifts, falling back to sleep. She has performances and people who want her to fail, and she has planned every second of these past weeks, but this--this is nice.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Blanket Permission:** go ahead and translate, make podfic, rework the fic, or do whatever other transformative work you can think of. If the work is hosted on another site, drop me a comment or email and I'll put a link in the story notes!
> 
> [twitter:](https://twitter.com/waldorph) for unfiltered me || [tumblr:](http://waldorph.tumblr.com/) less about me, more about the pretty gifsets and art


End file.
